Dakota Butterfield - Jamaica Plains, MA

Dakota Butterfield is a member and organizer of JPNET (Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition), a Transition initiative based in a richly-diverse neighborhood of Boston. She holds a certificate in Sustainable Design and Green Building from the Boston Architectural College and worked at The Green Roundtable in Boston planning educational programming for architects, engineers and contractors looking to “green” their practice. Her work as a consultant and trainer with non-profits and cooperatives spanned twenty years as she guided groups towards more effective democratic management and improved strategic outcomes. As an extension of her work with non-profits and cooperatives, she taught for over fifteen years in Tufts University’s graduate-level UEP program (Urban Environmental Policy), and for over a decade in the masters program in Community Economic Development at New Hampshire College. In addition, she has extensive experience with direct action and protest campaigns, having played a central role in Boston’s Central American solidarity movement, where an affinity-group-based effort organized mass protests and non-violent arrests to challenge US involvement in Nicaragua. As part of those efforts, she organized city-wide non-violent trainings and facilitated large consensus-based decision-making meetings among affinity spokespeople. Singing, nature-based spiritual practices and working to develop a zero-net energy homestead in Vermont keep her going in these dangerous and miraculous times.